AT LAST – A STRATEGIC MARKETING PROCESS
FOR SUCCESSFUL AEC BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT!

After six years of research and development, aided by innovating and teaching the first-ever graduate course in the marketing of AEC professional services in a College of Architecture, marketing consultant and educator Richard K. Rodgers has completed writing DIRECTIONS – Strategic Marketing For AEC Business Development.

The new publication will be released for sale in July, 2005. 

In clear language, the new work tells how successful Architects, Engineers, Contractors, Planners, and Designers use the Strategic Marketing Process to guide business generation activities. The new 360-page text/workbook marketing guide addresses the broad realities of business development and client relationship management in a state-of-the-art and usable manner as it explains the seven major ways The Marketing Process is being used in modern business today. It then presents a basic Marketing Glossary of 50 terms, principles and techniques sufficient to enable any professional practitioner to understand the entire process as it applies to and should be used in AEC business sector.

Step-by-step guidelines, instructions and directions take the professional reader through each phase of the Strategic and Tactical “Total Marketing Process”. Rodgers points out that the major problem in marketing professional services (Law, Architecture, Public Accounting, Consulting, etc.) is still that “People don’t understand that ‘Marketing’ is more than tactical selling! The Total Marketing Process has two parts, Strategic marketing which determines direction, capabilities, services and firm image (reputation), and Tactical marketing, which drives the actual marketing activities to capture the client engagement!”

A Part-time Associate Professor in Georgia Tech’s College of Architecture, Rodgers was introduced to Tech’s faculty ranks 20 years ago when the Vice President of Marketing Research for The Coca-Cola Company (a corporate client since 1960) asked him to serve as Guest Speaker for a Tech marketing class in Consumer Behavior focusing on one of Rodgers’ many projects for the Company.

Requested repeat appearances resulted in an invitation to design and teach “the marketing course you never had in college but wanted to take!” This led to Strategic RetailMarketing, the most popular elective in the College of Management for 15 years, and eventually, an invitation from COA Dean Thomas D. Galloway to innovate and teach ARCH 8841 – Marketing Architecture & Engineering Services. The course is open to all Tech students - Juniors, Seniors and Master’s degree candidates. Professionals in Architecture also take the course as full-time auditor students, enrolling through Georgia Tech’s Continuing Education Division.

Rodgers’ earlier text/workbook marketing guide, Marketing Legal Services (1993) was a breakthrough into strategic marketing in that sector. It proved easily adaptable as text in the first two years, supplemented by Rodgers’ survey of more than 100 AE firms.

“More than 5% had gone out of business since the current business telephone directory was produced,” he points out, “indicating that Architecture especially is a cash flow-thin business at best unless complementary client services surround the core practice of Architecture, such as Engineering, Interiors, Planning or other related services.”

Contributing to course uniqueness is the integration of some 20 Guest Speakers, all working against Rodgers’ Socratic Direction question list of what the students need to learn. Aided by all this contemporary information gained over the first two years, Rodgers developed the editorial product for DIRECTIONS, and used it with the AEC and Management students seeking out the course, refining and polishing it during 2000-2003

One Tech Junior in Management was so taken with DIRECTIONS, the course and career opportunities for Directors of Business Development in the AEC sector that he convinced Guest Speaker architect Bill Reynolds, co-founder of Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart & Stewart, to hire him as a part-time Marketing Intern before the Semester was half over. He worked out so well that SRSSA employed him fulltime that summer, part-time during the following senior year, and told him they would be glad to have him join the firm after graduation.

Included in addition to insight on modern marketing and the Marketing Glossary is a detailed chapter on performing a Strategic Marketing Audit of the firm’s business development effort (including a complete inventory and evaluation of the core business services portfolio and market segments being served), a chapter presenting five interrelated processes for analyzing the total AEC organization, and a chapter with step-by-step instructions for preparing a Master Business Plan built upon a complete Strategic Marketing analysis and evaluation.

Probably the most helpful single part of DIRECTIONS is the presentation of the first-ever schematic (visual) or algorithm of the AEC business development process, which consists of an adaptation of Philip Kotler’s “seven marketing management functions” into a two-part Strategic and Tactical grouping of these functions along with explanation of how they work together in AEC business development. Every part of DIRECTIONS can be hooked into or somehow integrated and explained within this visual process description.

The balance of the publication presents in-depth treatments of Client Relationship Management, Sales Lead origination, evaluation and handling, Proposal Selling (Persuasive Selling at Procter & Gamble), and 13 different techniques for resolving “Objections” or other issues and barriers to successful completion of the marketing process and being selected for the engagement.

A final section on “Marketing Tools” completes the information package, including a list and review of 20 specific business books on subjects helpful for AEC business development – such as ”how to work a room”, making more effective presentations, client retention and “cross selling”, and general utilization and implementation of the ideas, techniques, principles and processes presented in DIRECTIONS.

One approving reader-user is Kevin Hebblethwaite, President of EDI, Ltd., and former President of the Georgia Chapter of SMPS (Society for Marketing Professional Services), who summarizes DIRECTIONS this way:

“Richard Rodgers’ comprehensive text/workbook takes practical marketing strategy for professional services firms and presents it in a clear, concise fashion not often found in academia. Design students are taught to design. Business students are taught the concepts of running a business. “Directions” puts them all in the pot together and stirs them briskly with the spoon of strategic marketing.

“There are lots of marketing road maps out there for professional services firms. This one can help you actually reach Point B. “Directions: Strategic Marketing for AEC

Business Development” has earned a prime spot on my reference shelves. It also doesn’t have much time to get dusty.”

DIRECTIONS can be purchased only at or through the Engineer’s Bookstore, 748 Marietta Street, Atlanta, Georgia 30318, or from their website – www.engrbookstore.com. Textbook Manager Gary Barnes at 404-221-1669 (FAX: 404-221-1119) or 1-800-635-5919 is store coordinator for all orders and enquiries about DIRECTIONS, whose ISBN Number is 0-9641994-1-6. VISA and MasterCard ordering is possible now, by contacting him for instructions. Engineer’s Bookstore’s website will contain complete ordering information when it comes on line in July.

Single copy price is $95.00 plus $5.95 Shipping & Handling for off-site orders, plus state sales tax if applicable to the transaction. Quantity pricing is available for AEC firms interested in bringing an entire professional group or Studio up to speed for 21 st Century AEC business development. Enquiries should be directed to Barnes or to Mr. Rodgers at 404-257-0217 or email: r.k.rodgers@comcast.net.